It is a given that most of my visits to a utility dumpster will produce few items of interest. Generally the hardware is not that old and like the modern porcelain or composite insulators attached to it, have little aesthetic or collector value.

This stuff, modern and unappealing should just be left there, in the dumpster, to be sent to a landfill or to a metal shredder. But somehow since I am already there and have it in my grubby little hand, there seems to arise a Neanderthal need to drag it back to the cave. It is incredible how quick a pile of this useless crap can grow. Time and again I look at this pile of junk and ask myself, why?

Contributions to this junk pile have been ongoing on for decades. Line crews often let me have complete pole tops as old poles are removed from service. In Ontario, anything and everything pre 2006 is being removed from service and scrapped. Poles, crossarms, brackets, insulators, it all comes down. Hundreds of bolts, various lengths and sizes; porcelain spools with and without brackets; galvanized pins - short shank, long shank, cast iron, regular length, extra long. Metal crossarm braces of various lengths, and a hundred other odds and ends all become part of 'the pile'. Not just the hardware but wood crossarms and pins are also saved for future projects. A small inventory of this stuff might be useful, but to squirrel away absolutely everything thinking that someday there will be a use for it, really does seem implausible. One day I noticed just how many of the modern radio treated black on white porcelain cable top utilitarian uniparts, or as they are more commonly called, Ugly insulators had been accumulated. They seemed to be everywhere ( Kinda reminded me of that Star Trek episode -The Trouble with Tribbles). I began to ponder the idea of creating something using just them. Could enough Ugly be assembled together to make Ugly something of interest - if not even a little attractive in a Big Ugly sort of way. A black and white picture gives instant historic value to an image. Would a persons perception of this sculpture be one of historic even if one knew that the insulators were of recent production? Would that make them more acceptable? Inquiring minds need to know! Possibly this needs more study - perhaps a lucrative gov't grant? We have all seen tax dollars spent for less.

Three different styles of four pin tramp brackets give a bit of variety to the branches. Salvaged from many previous excursions along an abandoned railway here in Ontario they were conscripted and given a new lease on life. Sixty were culled from the afore mentioned junk pile and bolted together. Lower branches are three brackets bolted together by simply using one of the short shank pins as a connector. (This reduces the number of available pins from 240 to 200) Middle branches consist of two brackets while the uppermost branches are a single bracket. To create the symbolic evergreen tree like shape, the branches are aligned in pairs on opposite sides of the ten foot centre pole, at ten inch intervals.

The older style bracket has pins designed for a wood cob. The newer brackets have carrier style pins for which it was necessary to make cobs from wood pins that were in 'the other pile'. While not authentic, they serve this purpose. If I do not count the hundreds of dollars for gas driving to and from the old railway, then basically this project cost nothing. Just a couple dollars for the scrap metal pole and base.

This sculpture has created another surplus. What to do with hundreds of galvanized metal pins and crossarm braces that these Ugly insulators were tossed in the dumpster with.